11 - NOV 23 - Audition de G. et K. MC (2)

RJ : There's a fair bit more, I
don't want to rush this, but we'll see how we get on. Paragraph 82,
the first anniversary. You explain that you agreed to an interview
with Hello magazine. Just tell us a bit, please, about why you did
that?

GMC : I think the first thing to say, it
was very specific and we had -- clearly we've talked about our prime
objective, which is finding Madeleine, and what we've hoped is that
some good would come out of what happened to us. And one of the
things, through our own research and having been to the National
Centre for Missing and Exploited Children in the USA, was to talk
about AMBER Alert, and we decided that we would start campaigning for
a joined-up alert system for missing children within Europe,
particularly on the continent of Europe. For that very specific
reason, because Hello is distributed, I think, in 14 European
countries, they did approach us and said that they would promote the
campaign, and at the time we were lobbying MEPs to sign declarations
supporting an alert system, so we agreed to do an interview on that
basis, which, just for clarity, of course, we were not paid for.

KMC : Many of the media outlets
didn't really want to run with the work we were doing for the child
rescue alert, which in itself is disappointing because it is
important but obviously it's not as exciting, or whatever the word
is, when it comes to headlines and stories. So we saw this as an
opportunity of improving things for the greater good really.

RJ : One rival however wasn't best
pleased and you touch on this in paragraph 84. Maybe this is quiteunderstandable, but tell us a little
bit about the call you received from the then editor of the News of
the World.

GMC : I think it would be fair to
say that Mr Myler was irate when he learned of the publication which
happened and was berating us for not doing an interview with the News
of the World and told us how supportive the newspaper had been, the
news and rewards, and a time of stress for us on the first
anniversary, where we were actually launching a new campaign, we were
still arguidos at the time, a new call number for people to come
forward so we could continue the search for our daughter, and we were
interacting with the media to get that message out. He basically beat
us into submission, verbally, and we agreed to do an interview the
day after.

KMC : Can I just emphasise, this
is at an extremely stressful time. It was the run-up to one year of
not having our daughter with us. Emotionally as well as logistically,
everything we were trying to do, it was incredibly hard. So to get a
call like this, and you actually almost feel guilty, you know,
because they're saying, "We helped you, we got a reward",
and you almost say, "I'm sorry", and it's almost like
somebody won't help you unless you give something back.

GMC : And of course we were trying
to make the distinction between interacting with the media for what
we thought was something helpful for the search, and simply doing an
interview, which we knew would focus on the human interest aspects
and not necessarily the search for Madeleine.

Robert Jay :The News of the World come into the narrative a few months later, as you rightly say at paragraph 86. It may be that Dr Kate McCann would like to deal with this, but I'm in your hands. Out of the blue, 14 September 2008, transcripts from your personal diary appear or purport to appear in the News of the World. Can you tell us a bit about that, please?

Kate MC : You're right, this was
totally out of the blue. It was Sunday lunchtime, we'd just got back
from church and I got the text message from Gail, who works in the
nursery where Madeleine, Sean and Amelie went, and it just said, "Saw
your diary in the newspapers. Heartbreaking. I hope you're all
right." And it was totally out of the blue, and I had that
horrible panicky feeling, confusion and, you know, what's she on
about? I didn't have a clue. We rapidly found out, it was the News of
the World. I went and looked at it online, which was five pages,
including the front page. I got my original handwritten copy of my
diary out and sat there, and it was lifted in its entirety and put in
the newspaper without my knowledge. Apart from the odd word, which
was -- I think it was a translational error, that had obviously been
taken -- translated into Portuguese, and then a Portuguese copy had
then been translated back to English, which was slightly different
from the original, but pretty verbatim and it had been put there. I
felt totally violated. I'd written these words and thoughts at the
most desperate time in my life, most people won't have to experience
that, and it was my only way of communicating with Madeleine, and for
me, you know, there was absolutely no respect shown for me as a
grieving mother or as a human being or for my daughter, and it made
me feel very vulnerable and small and I just couldn't believe it. It
didn't stop there. It's not just a one-day thing. That whole week was
incredibly traumatic and every time I thought about it, I just
couldn't believe the injustice. I actually just recently read through
my diary entries at that point at that week and I talk about climbing
into a hole and not coming out because I just felt so worthless that
we'd been treated like this.

RJ : Can we be clear as to the provenance
of the diary. You mentioned a Portuguese translation, which may be a
clear indication of provenance but perhaps I can take this quite
shortly, that the judicial or police authorities in Portugal had
obtained or had seized a copy of your diary, or perhaps it was the
original, in August 2007; is that right?

KMC : Yes, it was --

RJ : We're talking about a hard copy,
manuscript document?

KMC : It was just handwritten.
They'd come and said they had taken clothes from the villa and we had
to leave, and when we got back later that day, they said they'd also
taken my diaries as well, which I have to say was a little bit of a
shock, but it did come back to me about 24, 48 hours later, so I
obtained the original copy. Obviously, photocopies were taken during
that period.

RJ : Yes. It wasn't clear from your
statement, but it now is. It was within quite a short space of time
that the original was returned to you, you believe by order of a
Portuguese judge, so it sounds as if the initial seizure had been a
step too far, or whatever. But a copy of the original must have been
taken by someone, presumably someone within the Portuguese police or
judicial authorities; is that correct?

Gerald MC : I think it's clear that the
police had copied the journal and had it translated, and of course at
the time we didn't understand why the journal could have been
relevant because Kate only started keeping it a couple of weeks after
Madeleine was taken, so we didn't know there was a copy until the
file was released the following summer, but within the file, the
Portuguese judicial file, there is an order from the judge, who's
read the translation and says, "This is of no interest to the
investigation, it's Kate's personal thoughts and should not ..."
and he actually used the word "violation".

KMC : He used the word
"violation". He said use of which would be a violation of
its author.

GMC : And ordered that any copies
be destroyed.

Lord Justice Leveson : And further
investigation of that has revealed, if anything? To unpick where this
came from?

GMC : I would like further
investigation as to where it came from.

KMC : An investigation.

GMC : Because clearly it was an
illegal copy.

RJ : I think what it relevant, and I
think this has already come out from Dr Kate McCann's evidence, is
that one or two things were lost in the translation, or changed,
which indicates that the piece in the News of the World was a
translation from the Portuguese.

GMC : Yes.

RJ : Because had it been precisely
verbatim, it might have led us --

KMC : Very subtle changes but
things like where I said I was "really upset", it says I
was "fed up". It does change the meaning slightly.

RJ : It may be we can investigate that or
it may be that we will receive an admission as to --

LJL : I'd like to know
whether there is a byline. KMC : It would be nice to know the
source.

LJL : Is there a byline
on the article?

RJ : It says "in her own
words".

LJL : Yes, yes, yes, I
understand that, but is there a reporter's name associated with it?

RJ : Pardon me, yes, there is.

LJL :There you are,
there's a potential line of inquiry.

RJ : It's a point I'd like to think
can be dealt with very quickly by someone. It can be confirmed,
because it's pointless denying it really. There's only one reasonable
inference here.

RJ :You do refer in paragraph 93 to a
conversation which was reported to you from Clarence with the deputy
editor of the News of the World as he then was, Mr Ian Edmondson. Can
you tell us a little bit about that?

GMC : I think the first thing to
say is that Clarence would speak to Ian Edmondson, who was deputy
editor and was probably responsible for most of the stories about
Madeleine at that time. So Clarence spoke to Ian on a regular basis
and one or two of the News of the World reporters. Clarence had
mentioned it to me, just saying that the News of the World had
indicated that they would do a supportive story, mainly attacking the
Portuguese police, but generally supportive. That was it. There was
no mention of having a copy of Kate's diary, no mention that they
were intending to publish it verbatim. So as Kate has already said,
it was a complete shock when we heard that it was printed.

RJ : Yes. They have breached a number of
tortious obligations which it's not necessary to spell out. It
culminated in a complaint, the possibility of litigation, but that
was avoided by an apology from the News of the World and the payment
of a further donation to the fund for the search for Madeleine; is
that correct?

GMC : Mm.

RJ : I'm just going to touch upon the
section continuing the relationship with the press. I am not going to
cover paragraph 97unless I'm asked to specifically. If you wish me
to I will, but I wasn't minded to. I was going to ask you though
about paragraph 100.

GMC : I mean, I think 97's probably
important.

RJ : Okay, well tell us about it in your
own words.

GMC :For one of the stories that was not
published and isn't libellous, not defamatory, but we were alerted to
it and it was done by a freelance journalist who has written many
inaccurate stories, and had submitted it, I think it was to the
People, if I'm right, the People on Sunday, and the editor or the
deputy editor called Clarence just to say they were running this,
this was on the evening of the Saturday, and Clarence phoned us and
it was complete nonsense, but it was basically saying that we were
undergoing IVF treatment with a view to getting a new baby to replace
Madeleine.

KMC : I think the important
thing, this demonstrates it's not just the articles that have been
published that have been a problem. We've had many weekends destroyed
because we've had to try and stop articles like this from actually
ending up in the press. And weekends are important for Gerry, that's
our only family time. We've had to involve lawyers on --

GMC : Friday nights. Another
example there which I don't think is in our evidence, but again it
transpired on a Friday evening, is journalists had gone to speak to
my mum, I think they said even -- you know, Clarence said it was okay
and my mum let them in and a lady journalist took a copy of an
unpublished photograph of Kate, myself and Madeleine when we lived in
Amsterdam that was very special to us and they were going to publish
it in a Scottish newspaper on the Sunday and we had to involve Adam
and Isabel from Carter Ruck to get that stopped. I think the only way
we managed to get a very stroppy interaction with the editor was that
we own the copyright of the picture and they were not in the least
apologetic.

GMC : The impact that these things
have in what should be a little bit of respite, but there have been
several occasions where we've gone behind the scenes at the eleventh
hour.

RJ : Thank you. Then paragraph 100, you
deal with a piece in the Daily Mail, quite recently, July of this
year, about an alleged reported sighting in India. What are your
feelings about that, please?

GMC : It's probably one of the most recent
examples of what I would say is the contempt for Madeleine and her
safety. There was no check. This sighting had been reported to the
police, I think we were actually on holiday. They emailed us a
photograph and we quickly indicated that it was not Madeleine, and as
far as we were concerned, it was dealt with. And then a day or two
later, it's published and the newspaper on that occasion have chosen
to publish it and they may want to justify why, but from our point of
view, they don't know whether it's true, they haven't contacted us,
and additionally we have the issue that if this really was a genuine
sighting of Madeleine, then her captors may be alerted and move her.
So the story has precedence over the safety of our child. And that's
clear. And that has been done by, I think, every single newspaper, as
well as similar instances of amateur sleuthing and details about the
investigation which should only be known to the witnesses and the
potential to contaminate evidence by having read something that you
shouldn't really know about, and all of the newspapers and
broadcasters have been guilty of it.

RJ : Thank you. Out of sequence, I'm then
going to come back to the PCC because it's a more general point, I
think, under the heading "Kate's book", paragraph 111. It
may be in your hands as to which of you would like to deal with this
piece of evidence.

GMC : Sure.

RJ : Book published in May of 2011, so
we're at the fourth anniversary, it was to mark that, to coincide
with that. Obviously a difficult decision. Do you want to tell us a
little bit about that?

KMC : You're right, it was a very
difficult decision for obvious reasons, for all the reasons we've
been discussing. But ultimately we are responsible for conducting and
funding the search to find our daughter.

RJ : Yes.

KMC : And ultimately I had to
make the decision, we needed to raise money, I knew this was
something that I could do that could maintain the search and possibly
help us find our daughter, and that's why I took the decision then to
do it. Obviously in the ideal world, you wouldn't choose to do
anything like that.

RJ : There was serialisation of your book
in two News International titles, the Sun and the Sunday Times?

GMC : Yes.

RJ : You talk about a meeting with
Rebekah Brooks, which led to a review of your case, a formal review.
Just to assist us a little bit with that, can you recall when that
was?

GMC : I think it's probably worth just
elaborating a little bit because it's quite a complex decision-making
process in terms of agreeing to serialise the book. News
International actually bid for the rights to the book, along with
Harper Collins, and one of their pitches was the fact that they would
serialise the book across all of their titles, and we were somewhat
horrified at the prospect of that, given the way we'd been treated in
the past, and the deal was actually done with the publishers,
Transworld, that excluded serialisation. Now, we were subsequently
approached by News International and Associated to serialise the
book, and after much deliberation, we had a couple of meetings with
the general manager and -- Will Lewis and Rebekah Brooks and others,
and what swung the decision to serialise was News International
committed to backing the campaign and the search for Madeleine. And
that passed our test of how it could help, and we had been lobbying
behind the scenes for two and a half years, with successive Home
Secretaries, to try and get a review of Madeleine's case, and we felt
that having News International helping in that, and ultimately where
I think the media have helped in this situation, of galvanising the
public, having them re-engaged with us and Madeleine, is what tipped
the balance.

RJ : Her intervention was successful?

GMC : It was.

RJ : There may not be a module three
issue.

LJL : Yes.

RJ : It's right to say in terms of
the sequence of events, I think the Prime Minister was involved just
a bit before, and then the Home Office the day after?

GMC : Yes, I think --

RJ :The same day announced --

GMC : We had written to the Home Secretary
saying that we'd be launching the book, and asking her to update us
on where they had got, and we got one letter which really didn't say
very much, and then we did the open letter to the Prime Minister,
which was published on the front page of the Sun.

RJ :Turn back to the issue of the
involvement of the PCC. This is covered both in your witnessstatement and in evidence you gave, Dr
Gerald McCann, to the Culture, Media and Sports Select Committee in
2009, and then it was picked up in the second report, I think, of
that committee. There's a whole section of the report that goes to
that issue.

The position I think is -- I'm back in
your statement, paragraph 101 -- the PCC's position is that at an
early stage they put a message out that they were ready, willing and
able to assist you. This was in May 2007. Do you follow me?

GMC : Yes.

RJ : I think your evidence is, well, you
never got that message. Was that right?

GMC : If I did, it was lost in the time
when we were obviously dealing with lots of things, and I would say
probably similar to Mrs Gascoigne who gave evidence earlier this
morning, that I was only vaguely aware of the PCC at that time.

RJ : In paragraph 103 you say: "We
have on a number of occasions had cause to contact the PCC. The PCC
was extremely helpful in dealing with the unwanted intrusion into the
privacy of our twins." Are you referring there to the business
with the paparazzi taking photographs when you're back in the United
Kingdom?

GMC : Yes.

KMC : That's right.

GMC : I think we had also
indicated earlier in the summer of 2007 that although we tacitly
agreed to having photographs of us taken in Praia da Luz, largely
because we felt that we couldn't stop it, particularly with
international media being there, that as the situation dragged on
over months, we didn't want continued photographs of Sean and Amelie
to be published, and we were obviously concerned at the time, they
were just 2, but as they got older, they could be recognised. So
there was an agreement -- and I can't remember exactly if the PCC
were involved in that, but we asked the media not to publish
photographs of Sean and Amelie, and that was adhered to with
pixelation up until we arrived back in the UK and then it went out
the window again.

RJ : In terms of the PCC assisting you in
relation to the wider issue of inaccurate, unfair and sensationalist
reporting, it may well be that there isn't a factual dispute between
you and the PCC at that time, of course, speaking through Sir
Christopher Meyer. If you kindly look under tab 9, Dr McCann, you'll
see relevant extracts from the report of the Culture, Media and
Sports Select Committee published on 9 February 2010. I invite your
attention -- the pagination is working -- on the top right-hand side
of each page, to page 87.

GMC : Yes.

RJ : You should find a heading, "The
role of the PCC", I hope, and then paragraph 354. There we deal
with the message which they say they gave to you and you've told us
really, well, you don't recollect it, and of course a lot was going
on, but there was a meeting, and this is 355, on 13 July 2007 --

LJL : That was just
accidental.

RJ : Yes. The general thrust of what
you were told by Sir Christopher Meyer during the course of an
informal conversation, is this correct, is that if you wanted to deal
with the issue of libel, well, then the route was legal recourse,
legal action. But if you wanted to deal with it in some other way,
then the PCC might be able to help? GMC : Yes.

RJ : Does that capture the sense of that
meeting?

GMC : It's probably fair to put in there
that I had a number of conversations with Sir Christopher, primarily
because we became friendly with his wife, Lady Catherine, through her
work with PACT, so on that first occasion I met Sir Christopher and
he broadly asked, "How are the media treating you?" and we
were very open and at that point we said, "Considering the
interest, not too bad", and we didn't really have too much in
the way of specific complaints.

I did have further informal
conversations and they also dealt with correspondence from Kingsley
Napley over the period, but the gist of the conversations, and most
of my dialogue with him, informal rather than written, was that we
agreed with our legal advice and we took the best legal advice we
could get, that the way to stop this was to take legal action and not
to go to the PCC, and I think Sir Christopher agreed with that.

RJ : That's a fair summary, Dr McCann.
It's what the committee think as well, although Paul Dacre expressed
disappointment that you didn't make a formal complaint to the PCC,
although Sir Christopher disagreed with Paul Dacre so we have two
views --

GMC : I think the ultimate thing was we
discussed a course of action and our advice, which was given in no
uncertain terms, this is legal advice, was that the PCC were not fit
to deal with the accusations, the nature of them, the number of them
and the severity.

RJ : The Inquiry will note, but it's not
necessary for me to read it out, the conclusions of the Select
Committee on these issues. They start at paragraph 364 and 365 in
bold. And the direct criticism is made by the Select Committee of the
PCC that the press were beginning to ignore the requirement of the
code and the PCC remained silent. Then under the heading "Lessons
learnt", they review your case. They rightly point out that this
was a very unusual case. They state that the coverage was

"freakish", and then their
conclusions are set out at paragraphs 373 and 375. Perhaps I should
read those out?

LJL : The word
"freakish" is the committee saying it's far from clear that
the McCann coverage was really so freakish.

RJ :Paragraph 373: "The
newspaper industry's assertion that the McCann case is a one-off
event shows that it is in denial about the scale and gravity of what
went wrong and about the need to learn from those mistakes. In any
other industry suffering such a collective breakdown, as for example
in the banking sector now, any regulator worth its salt would have
instigated an inquiry. The press indeed would have been clamouring
for it to do so. It's an indictment on the PCC's record that it
signally failed to do so. "The industry's words and actions
suggest a desire to bury the affair without confronting its serious
implications, the kind of avoidance which newspapers would criticise
mercilessly and rightly if it occurred in any other part of society.
The PCC, by failing to take firm action, let slip an opportunity to
prevent or at least mitigate some of the most damaging aspects of
this episode and in so doing lent credence to the view that it lacks
teeth and is slow to challenge the newspaper industry." Is there
anything you wish to add or subtract from that?

GMC : I think I would agree with it, and
it's probably for others to decide whether the PCC could have changed
it. I think that's a moot point.

RJ : Can I deal now with some general
points, including the four general points you made at the start? But
before I deal with those four points, I'm back to your witness
statement at paragraph 116. You refer to the or a culture change
which is required. May I invite you, please, to put that in your own
words, both to identify the existing culture and then the change
which you think is required?

GMC : I think we can speak with experience
about how powerful the media are, and how much damage they can do.
We've already said how many good things that they have done as well,
so there is power, there is no doubt about it. But what we see on a
daily basis are front page tabloid headlines in particular, sometimes
followed by a clamour with 24-hour news channels and Internet and a
blurring of the media, of stories which appear to have no factual
basis, or exaggerated, or distorted. You've heard about several of
hundreds that were written about us, but we see them, I walk into the
shop in the hospital every day and I see front page headlines,
whether it's about Chris Jefferies who is going to give evidence, or
contestants on the X Factor, and I think information has been written
and lives are being harmed by these stories, and something has to
change. A commercial imperative is not acceptable.

RJ : Thank you. The four specific
headings you've given us, in one sense you've largely covered these
but it's helpful if we can bring the strands together. The first is
libel. Might it be said, and can I just invite you to deal with this,
well, this in fact is an example, your case, of the system working to
the extent that you decide at a certain point that enough is enough.
Obviously as professional people you're not going to put your house
on the line to fund legal action, but conditional fee arrangements
were available, you took advantage of that. Within a reasonably swift
time-frame, and it's for others to decide whether it was quick enough
or whatever, the position of Express Newspapers changes, they admit
liability, they make a statement in open court, they pay £550,000,
which in the scale of things is a significant amount of money with
modern libel awards, and there's a front-page apology. Is that an
example of the system working or do you have a different take on what
I've just said?

GMC : I think it is an example of the
system working in part, however we would much rather we weren't
awarded any damages and the stories had not been published, and I
think it's very important to emphasise that we have experienced
long-lasting damage as a result of the headlines and the media
coverage, including recent trips to Holland and Spain where our taxi
driver said, "Oh, you're the parents who are accused of killing
your own daughter, what happened?" and secondly in Spain where
they showed a film that supposedly had us showing tablets that were
tranquillisers that we'd supposedly given to children, stated as
virtually fact. So although we've worked incredibly hard to change
things in the UK, the damage is more widespread. So the money is only
for me -- and I understand that the costs may be more of a deterrent
than the damages, per se, but it's only a partial compensation, and
once it's there, yes, the apology goes part of the way, but as we've
seen, often the reporting is much wider than the original offending
outlet, and the damage is long-lasting. And if you go on the Internet
now, which our nearly 7-year-old twins will be doing, most of these
allegations are still there and we will have to continue dealing with
them going forward.

RJ : You make two points there, I think,
Dr McCann. The first is the point damages are never proper
recompense, and it's right, the judges recognise that, whether it's a
reputation case or personal injuries case, the money can never
provide reparation. The particular point in your case is there's an

international dimension and whatever
happens in the United Kingdom in terms of statements in open court,
they're not going to carry any mileage or impact outside this
jurisdiction.

GMC : No.

RJ : Hence your experiences in Spain and
the Netherlands.

GMC : Correct.

RJ : That's a helpful observation. What
about your second heading, which was privacy laws? Could you help us
a bit more with that, please?

GMC : Yeah. I think it's something
obviously we probably hadn't thought too much about before we found
ourselves in the situation that we are. You take your anonymity for
granted. What I find disturbing, clearly, when you're being followed,
you're being put in danger by either reporters' or photographers'
behaviour and secondly I think it is probably an anomaly within the
legal system that a commercial organisation can take a photograph of
you, use it in their product, which they sell and make a profit
without your consent, and I think that should be remedied. I think if
I'm here, I know I'm in public, I'm giving evidence, I understand
that images will be used, I fully understand that and I'm implicitly
consenting to it, but whether it's us going for a run or driving out
of our front drive, and particularly with children, I don't think it
should be allowed. I think you should not be allowed to publish
photographs of private individuals going about their private business
without their explicit consent, signed.

RJ : The existing PCC Editors' Code
speaks of either a private place or a public place where there's a
reasonable expectation of privacy. I think your evidence is
suggesting that that latter concept is quite a difficult one to
understand and in particular to apply.

GMC : Mm-hm.

RJ : So that indeed further thought need
be given to that. The third issue we may or may not have brought out
adequately but please expand it if you wish to. Contempt for the
judicial process, namely the secrecy implications of the Portuguese
law, I think, and for your child's safety.

GMC : Yes.

RJ : You have addressed that issue, but
is there anything you would like to expand, bring any strands
together?

GMC : Yes, it wouldn't be explicit to
judicial secrecy in Portugal, and by judicial I meant the whole
process which in Portugal is obviously overseen by a judge. So you
have information. We were told we were under judicial secrecy not to
give details of events. Whatbecame very apparent was, you know, the
media were trying to create a time-line of what happened, and we had
obviously created a time-line and given it to the police and tried to
narrow down to the closest minutes when we think Madeleine was taken
to help the investigation. But when that information goes into the
public domain and the abductor shouldn't know it, or the only person
who should know it were the people who were there, then that's a
concern. It can contaminate evidence. You could incriminate yourself
by knowing something that you shouldn't have known. So that's the
first process, and I think clearly, as again I'm not a lawyer and I
may be speaking out of turn, but it's probably clear when there is a
court case on in the United Kingdom, about what's to be reported and
what not, and the police are very careful about which information
they give to the media in this

country, but for me there was contempt
about that whole investigative process. There was no regard for the
outcome. It was much more important for the media outlets to have the
detail or perhaps to have the contradictions, and the salacious
aspects that followed it. And then the point about Madeleine has
never been raised, I think, before, and clearly every outlet, I
think, has been guilty of this, about reporting sightings, suspicious
people, without giving it to the proper authorities. And that is of
grave concern, and obviously our concern and focus is Madeleine, but
it applies to other cases as well.

RJ : Your fourth heading is quite a broad
one: acceptable standards.

GMC : Yes. I did have a quick look at the
National Union of Journalist's submission and there are standards,
but there are no penalties for not sticking to them, and whatever
your profession is, particularly in this country, then there is
fairly strong regulation which we have to abide to, and I have seen
no individual journalist or editor brought to account over the
stories, be it within Express Newspapers Group or Associated or any
of the other groups and I think if there are repeated offenders, then
they should lose their privilege of practising as a journalist.

LJL : Quite difficult,
that. I understand exactly why you're saying that, but just let me
share with you the difficulty, that what journalists do is exercise
the right of free speech, and whereas you as doctors require licence
to practise medicine, and if you are taken to the GMC then the GMC
have all sorts of sanctions available, it's quite difficult in
relation to the exercise of free speech. That's not to say that there
shouldn't be penalties there shouldn't be some mechanism whereby
there's a holding to account for what you've done.

GMC : Sure.

LJL : But --

GMC : Thank you, sir. I would like to
emphasise that I strongly believe in freedom of speech, but where you
have people who are repeatedly carrying out inaccuracies and have
been shown to do so, then they should be held to account. That is the
issue. I don't have a problem with somebody purporting a theory,
writing fiction, suggestions, but clearly we've got to a stage where
substandard reporting and sources, unnamed, made-up, non-verifiable,
are a daily occurrence.

LJL : Yes. I wasn't
criticising you at all, but I was simply seeking to explain why that
particular remedy may be very difficult to apply in this context. But
it's not to say there shouldn't be something. Now, I'm not saying
what, because that's part of what I'm here for, if anything, I say
immediately, but you've doubtless read that different people have
been suggesting different models.

GMC : Sure.

LJL : And it's actually
that question which is the burning part of the job that I have to do,
which only underlines how extremely valuable your experience has
been, and how very grateful I am for you sharing it with us GMC : Sure.

RJ : I have no more questions, Dr
McCann, Dr McCann. Is there anything you want to add? Maybe Mr
Sherborne has a point, but that concludes all I have to ask.

GMC : No, I think we've covered all our
points, thank you.

LJL : Thank you very
much. Mr Sherborne, 8 did you want to ask something?

David Sherbone :Sir, I realise that we
all need time properly to digest the very uncomfortable evidence that
the McCanns have given. As I mentioned last week, we say it's nothing
short of a national scandal, but there's one point I do formally want
to raise. It was touched on earlier. We've seen representatives of
the media organisations stand up very quickly to respond to the
criticism of their newspapers --

LJL : Is there going to
be a question, Mr Sherborne?

David Sherbone : There is.

LJL : Then I'd like to
hear the question.

David Sherbone : It's not a question. I
raise this. It was mentioned by the McCanns and you mentioned it as
well, and that is in relation to News International, and what we do
ask is they provide a response, sir, as you mentioned, in relation to
the publication of Kate McCann's diary --

LJL : Mr Sherborne, I
think that is a speech. We can discuss what we should do, and of
course I'm in a position to do something about it, because if there's
a name, then I can issue a request, and I put the word "request"
in inverted commas, under Section 21 of the 2005 Act, and I can find
out.

David Sherbone : Sir, I understand that.
It's not just the byline, if I may say, with respect, because that's
the person who wrote the story. There is also the question, which I'm
sure the McCanns would like to be dealt with, if possible, which is
who obtained and in what circumstances they obtained the diary from
the Portuguese police.

LJL : I understand.

David Sherbone : That's a decision at a
higher level.

LJL : That's a thread,
and I'm absolutely alert to the point. I really am.

David Sherbone : I'm very grateful.

LJL : Thank you.

Dr McCann, Dr McCann, thank you very
much indeed. I can only wish you everything well in your continuing
search for Madeleine.